A gas leak killed eight miners in a coal mine in central China's Hunan Province on Tuesday with the last four missing miners found dead in the afternoon.

The accident occurred at about 6:45 a.m. at Yipingdong Coal Mine run by Jinzhushan Mining Company in the city of Lengshuijiang when 14 miners were underground, the company said in a statement.

Six miners escaped. A 70-member rescue team recovered four bodies in the morning and the remaining four in the late afternoon, it said.

An investigation into the cause of the accident is underway.

The mine has a designed annual production capacity of 180,000 tonnes.